Is manufacturing flexibility a purely contemporary phenomenon, an outgrowth of computer-controlled technologies, volatile markets, and sophisticated consumers that did not exist in a previous age of Fordist mass production? Or did mass manufacturers in earlier periods face comparable problems of combining high productivity, low costs, rapid product innovation, and frequent adjustments to shifting demand? And if so, what technological and organizational solutions did they develop in response? Did the flexible manufacturing practices made famous by Japanese firms in the 1970s and 1980s such as just-in-time logistics, collaborative supplier relations, joint product development, quick tooling changes, and mixed-model assembly represent a sharp break with the canonical principles of Western mass production? Or were these innovations anticipated—and even to some extent inspired—by earlier experiments with manufacturing flexibility pioneered by American and European firms during the heyday of mass production itself ? Focusing on the archetypal mass production industry at the height of the Fordist era between the 1920s and the 1970s, the papers in this special issue of Enterprise & Society offer new and surprising answers to these questions.

This article contests the view that “stages of development” determine a uniquely appropriate set of production and marketing strategies for a given industry in a given period. Looking closely at the British automobile industry after World War II, it instead presents the argument that opportunities for significant choices between more or less flexible technologies and organizational forms constitute a continuous feature of modern economic history. Moreover, piecemeal borrowing and selective adaptation have been more common than wholesale imitation of any particular system, and modification and hybridization of imported technologies represent not resistance to “foreign” elements, but creative attempts to fit those elements to local conditions.

During the two decades before World War II, as this article demonstrates, the relationship between the Big Three American automakers and their parts suppliers was remarkably similar to the celebrated cooperation of Japanese auto assemblers and their trading partners after 1980. Unlike the arms-length multisourcing that characterized American firms after 1960, the prewar Detroit production culture featured collaborative development, cost sharing, and long-term innovative relationships. This system nurtured the rise of Chrysler, which not only grew from a standing start in 1920 to convert the General Motors-Ford duopoly into the “Big Three” by 1930, but also established itself as the industry's leader in innovation and profitability.

First experimented with in the 1920s and 1930s in the production of automobile engines, transfer machines became dominant in U.S. engine plants in the 1940s and 1950s, as automakers invested heavily in this equipment to meet pent-up demand following the war. Transfer machines thus became identified with “Detroit automation”. But with the advent of a “horsepower race”, firms found that transfer machines could not accommodate even minor changes in design. Late in the 1950s the industry developed and applied “building-block automation” to transfer machines to attain greater flexibility. Examining these developments contributes to our understanding of both specific industries and the general history of mass production and its alternatives.

Rather than appearing full-blown in the 1970s, flexible production techniques were developed gradually in the Japanese automobile industry. After World War II, drawing on indigenous expertise derived from the cotton textile and aircraft industries, pioneering automakers Nissan and Toyota adapted Western-style automation technology, particularly transfer machines, to local conditions. In addition to building flexibility into as many aspects of this inherently inflexible technology as possible, manufacturers also worked to adapt labor and supplier relations to the needs of the new technology within the constraints of the local environment.

During the 1996 annual meeting of the Business History Conference, a session on the World Wide Web attracted considerable attention from curious members (see Business and Economic History 25 [Fall 1996]: 46—54). The Internet was then somewhat of an infant, and most of us, just becoming accustomed to the speed and convenience of electronic mail, were barely aware of the opportunities afforded by the then-new graphical interface known as the Web. No more! At least not in the United States, where advertisers bombard us with their Internet addresses and news accounts inform us of vast fortunes made in new Internet ventures that have not yet turned a profit. There is, in short, a “dot.com” revolution occurring in American business. It is also happening, albeit more slowly, in scholarly and educational circles.

Longstanding debates among academic historians about the role of the narrative and the need (or not) for relevance are not likely to end any time soon. Business historians have been relatively unreflective about such matters, at least compared with, say, labor or women’s historians, who regularly sprinkle their journals with historiographic reassessments. Perhaps this is because there was little on the theoretical end of the scale in business history to sustain earnest debate prior to the publication of Alfred Chandler’s first masterwork, Strategy and Structure, scarcely more than a generation ago. Still, it was Allan Nevins—the journalist cum Columbia University history professor whose prodigious writings included several elegant business biographies—who memorably satirized the history academy with “Dr. Dry-as-Dust,” a crusty purveyor of densely ponderous prose for like-minded scholarly elites.